CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



for miles back from the lake, was a dismal swamp 

 -the natural home of frogs, wild ducks, and 

 beavers. 



The six years between 1837 and 1843 had 

 been to Illinois a period of the deepest discour- 

 agement. There was little or no money that 

 any one could accept with confidence. Trade 

 was on a barter basis. The State was hopelessly 

 in debt. It had borrowed $14,000,000 in the 

 enthusiasm of its first land boom, and now had 

 no money to pay the interest. Even as late as 

 1846 there was only $9,000 in the State treasury. 

 Buffalo was at this time the chief grain market 

 of the United States. We were selling a little 

 wheat to foreign countries much less than is 

 grown to-day in Oklahoma. Hulled corn was 

 the staff of life in Iowa. The Mormons had 

 just started from Illinois on their 1,500-mile 

 pilgrimage to the West, through a country that 

 had not a road, a village, a bridge, nor a well. 

 The sewing-machine had recently been invented 

 by Howe, and the use of ether had been an- 

 nounced by Dr. Morton; but there was no Hoe 

 press, nor Bessemer steel, nor even so much as a 



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